


Changeful British Skies

by Mossgreen



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gladiators, Introspection, My First Work in This Fandom, Other, Pre-Canon, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 05:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20003107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossgreen/pseuds/Mossgreen
Summary: A look at Esca before he meets Marcus.This is based solely on the book.





	Changeful British Skies

**Author's Note:**

> Please note I have never seen the 2011 film, and nor do I intend to; it departed too far from the characterisation of both Marcus and Esca as shown in the book as well as changing fundamental things about their relationship. And it left out some pretty important characters.

Since the coming south, Esca finds that, after the family he can hardly bear to remember, he most misses the wide open skies of his homeland. The sky above the ludus is barren and bronze to him, his prayers reaching no further than the ceiling of his cell as though Lugh has likewise turned his back and abandoned him. 

His dreams are dark and misshapen, full of pain and grief, from the last stand at his clan's strong place to the death of his grandmother when he was a boy before he received the blue warrior patterns. The clipping of his ear is mixed up in the dreams too, the weight of the man pinning him down with a knee in his spine and the sharp bite of the knife as it carves a slice painfully out of his ear as his father watches with a distant look on his face, his hair spiked with lime in the old way and the sun bright on the torque at his neck.

It is all the same nightmare; his father was dead by the time he was taken, as were his brothers, and yet it does not stop his father witnessing his shame and pain night after night.

Nothing about the south feels comfortable or familiar to him, it is all straight lines and stone walls and paved roads, even though he does not get to leave the ludus as some of the gladiators do - his world has been forcibly reduced to the high walls of the ludus, and the tiered seating of the amphitheatre, and even though that is not yet formed in stone, the pattern of it is clear and it feels iron-hard and stone-cold. And the oval of sky above him has no skeins of geese threading their way across it, no flocks of starlings wheeling and diving and turning and dancing with the air-currents. And the clouds seem little puffy things, light and carefree.

He feels most at home when the storm clouds gather, which is not often, to break the unbearable southern heat in one glorious storm, when the lightning dances across the sky and the thunder can be felt in his very bones. He used to love the glory of it, the wonder of the gods’ wrath, turning his face to the rain, and now he can only listen from a distance and hope that a thunder-bolt might strike the ludus so that he might have a chance of escape. The scent after the rain is also somehow smaller, hemmed and fenced in with the men as they train, their sandalled feet sliding in mud of a softer texture and paler colour than that of home.

His very clothing is unfamiliar, legs bare now instead of clad in the warm braccae woven in his clan’s plaid cloth, torso likewise bare except when he is given a plain Roman tunic to wear. Even that leaves his arms bare, as his old tunics had not.

These southern winters, Esca discovers, are also softer than those he is used to, with cold hard rain rather than the soft snow. It rains often, and on the days when it does not, it is still grey, colourless as everything in Esca’s life is now. The days when there are no clouds, the sky is winter-white, bleached of all colour except the palest blue, and it is on those days that he remembers home the most.

Those days are painful and do not come often, and Esca is grateful for that.

He has been a slave for two years, fighting in the Calleva arena for all of them except the first few months he spent as a prisoner of Rome. He despises it, fighting for the entertainment of others rather than in defence of kith and kin or to expand their territory.

These fights are always only to first blood, though, but as the days draw short and the nights grow long and he knows it is nearing the solstice, the circus master announces that the games that will be held for Saturnalia will feature a fight to the death. Those chosen for that fight are a retiarius and a secutor and Esca grows cold at the realisation that he could end up choking out his life in the sand of a Roman arena, for Roman entertainment, far from the place of his birth, for no other reason than it will please his captors.

The days pass in a blur and the day of his fight, maybe of his death, dawns a clear hard winter-white, with a crispness to the air that presages snow before very many more days pass.

The gladiators, Esca among them, march out into the hard gazes of those who have come to see their blood spilled this day, and pause before the magistrates whose togas are a bright white bordered with purple that seems blood-red to Esca's eyes. 

"Avete, magistrāti, morituri vōs salutant…"

The Latin is harsh and foreign still in his mouth, even after two years. He looks up at the magistrates and their families. There is a young man, of about his own age, thoroughly Roman, but whose dark eyes are somewhat drawn in pain. Esca cannot help but wonder about him, even as he leaves the ring.

His fight, his death, will be the climax of the day before the gathered masses return home to their dinners as his body is tossed into a pit and his soul left to wander because it cannot cross over to the afterlife where his family will wait for his coming forever.

His fight goes about as well as can be expected. Esca, fleet of foot, has the upper hand at first - he has chosen not to fight as a warrior but to fight as a hunter running down his prey. He is so intent on the chase that he forgets that his prey is deadly until the net licks out, catching him headlong in his pursuit and bringing him to the dust, rolling him over and over in its web until he is brought up hard against the wooden hoarding below where the magistrates sit and his eyes meet the dark brown gaze of the young Roman.

He thinks at first to raise his arm, plead for mercy, for his life, but the Roman is blotted out by a vision of his father, warrior’s lime-spiked hair bright against the white sky, and his arm falls to his side again. He, Esca son of Cunoval of the tribe of Brigantes, bearers of the blue war shield, cannot beg for his life.

His father vanished again and he sees the Roman standing, gripping the rail so tight his knuckles are turned white as he makes the Roman sign for life. The old man beside him copies the sign, as does the girl with the vixen-coloured hair on his other side.

He cannot look any further and closes his eyes, only to feel the arena attendants come to untangle him from the Fisher’s net and aid him to his feet.

As he leaves the arena, he feels the crowd’s gaze heavy on him, a further weight to add to the shame of losing.

He does not feel the weight of the Roman’s gaze and he is uncomfortably, obscurely grateful for that.

When the news comes the next day that he is sold, he cannot find it within himself to be surprised. He has lost a fight, the circus master will not make money for putting him back in the arena.

He dresses in a Roman tunic, the undyed linen colourless. It leaves his arms bare and the blue warrior patterns inked there are startling next to the pale white of his own skin. Has he, also, grown colourless here in the south?

He has no possessions save one thing to take with him as he follows the slave out of the ludus. The man looks like a goat, to Esca’s eyes, but he cannot share the observation with his brother as he would once have done, and that stabs though the ache of it is less now.

The man is talking, but the words rolls off Esca. He hears enough to learn that his new master had been a soldier, a legionary - a centurion, a leader of legionaries, even - and his heart grows cold, and then hot as he remembers the dark-haired Roman clinging to the railing with one bloodless hand.

Above him, the wide open sky is grey and he turns his face to the gentle southern rain, runs his fingers through wet russet hair, and dares to hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations/explanations  
> ludus - gladiator training school  
> retiarius - type of gladiator armed with a net and trident  
> secutor - type of gladiator armed with a sword and shield. These two different types were commonly paired up to fight one another.  
> avēte, magistrāti, morituri vōs salūtant - hail, magistrates, we who are about to die salute you


End file.
